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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




014 455 793 1 



PR 4433 
.W58 
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Number 



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Thomas Carlyle. 



Di^NIEL ^^TISE, D.D. 



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NEW YORK: 
P H I L L IPS & HUNT 

CINCINNATI : 

>A/^ALDEN & STO^A/^E. 

1883. 



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The "Home College Series" will contain one hundred short papers on 
a wide range of subjects — biographical, historical, scientific, literary, domes- 
tic, political, and religious. Indeed, the religious tone will characterize all 
of them. They are written for every body — for all wliose leisure is limited, 
but who desire to use the minutes for the enrichment of life. 

These papers contain seeds from the best gardens in all the world of 
human knowledge, and if dropped wisely into good soil, wi'l bring forth 
harvests of beauty and value. 

They are for the young — especially for young people (and older people, 
too) who are out of the schools, who are full of "business" and "cares," 
who are in danger of reading nothing, or of reading a sensational literature 
^bat is worse than nothing. 

One of these papers a week read over and over, thought and talked about 
at "odd times," will give in one year a vast fund of information, an intel- 
lectual quickening, worth even more than the mere knowledge acquired, a 
taste for solid readng, many hours of simple and wholesome pleasure, and 
ability to talk intelhgently and helpfully to one's friends. 

Pastors may organize " Home College " classes, or " Lyceum Reading 
Unions," or "Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circles," and help the 
young people to read and think and talk and live to worthier purpose. 

A young man may have his own little " college " all by himself, read this 
series of tracts one after the other, (there will soon be one hundred of them 
ready,) examine himself on them by the " Thought-Outline to Help the Mem- 
ory," and thus gain knowledge, and, what is better, a hve of knowledge. 

And what a young man may do .in this respect, a young woman, and both 
old men android women, may do. 

J. H. ViXOENT. 
Nbw Yosk, Jan., 1888. 



Ck>pyrifht, 1868, by Phillips & Hunt, N«w York. 



k 



iome ®o((egc Series, dumber ®m. 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 



BY DANIEL WISE, D.D. 



Thomas Carlyle was born December 4, 1795, in the town 
of Ecclefechan, Scotland. His father was a thrifty mason. 
His immediate ancestors were of humble rank, but it is 
claimed that they were descendants of men who, in earlier 
times, could boast of lordly titles, large estates, and noble 
companionships. This claim is uncertain and of little con- 
sequence. Thomas Carlyle's world-wide reputation stands 
not on ancestral connections, but on his unique writings and 
his rare intellectual powers. 

Carlyle's early life was by no means a joyful one, neither 
was it exceptionally hard. There were no luxuries in his 
humble home, but there was plenty of such wholesome food 
as oat-meal, milk, and potatoes. Thomas and his eight 
brothers and sisters ran about the village street barefoot, 
but they were kept scrupulously clean by their pious, just, 
wise, and affectionate mother. This faithful w^oman taught 
Thomas to read. His sterner fatlier gave him liis first lessons 
in arithmetic when he w^as live years old, and then he was 
sent to the village school. 

When two years old Master Thomas showed himself the 
possessor of the genuine Carlyle temper, by throwing " his 
little brown stool at his brother in a mad passion of rage ; " a 
deed for which his childish conscience smote him with re- 
morseful pangs. 

On the whole, Carlyle's child-life, though not w^ithout its 
shadows was, he says, safe, quiet, wholesome. His parents 
were not given to much talk in the family circle, and his 
father, while the possessor of many sterling qualities and 
usually quiet, "was capable of blazing into whirlwinds" of 
temper. Nevertheless Carlyle testifies of them that, "No 



Thomas Cablyle. 



man of my day, or hardly any man, can have better par- 
ents." 

Carlyle's father and mother were strictly religions people. 
They belonged to a sect of Seceders from the old Scottish 
Kirk, and worshiped in a little rustic meeting-house. They 
were Calvinists of the old-fashioned type. 

Nine years of Carlyle's life were passed amid these home 
influences. When he was ten, his Ecclefechan teacher, who 
regarded him as a genius, having made good rei)ort of his 
progress, and his minister's son having introduced him to 
Latin, his father decided to send him to the grammar school 
at Annan, six miles distant. Here his instruction was me- 
chanical, and only " moderately good ; " his schoolmates, 
owing to his small size, his quiet, retiring habits, and his 
fidelity, long maintained, to a promise given his mother never 
to fight, treated him harshly, nick-named him the Tearful, 
and his time, as he said, was " utterly wasted ;" an assertion 
which was scarcely true, since by means of " some small store 
of curious reading," by going much to the craftsmen's work- 
shops, and especially by the help of his mathematical teacher, 
he made considerable additions to his knowledge while at 
Annan. His father, feeling confident that he was no ordinary 
boy, determined to send him to the University at Edinburgh. 
Accordingly, in the dreary month of November, 1809, this 
lad of fourteen, guided by one Tom Small, who had been 
some two years at college, walked from Ecclefechan to Edin- 
burgh, nearly one hundred miles, in five days, and entered 
himself as a student of its University. 

To this simple Ecclefechan boy Edinburgh was at first a 
wonderland, and his entrance 'into association with the dis- 
tinguished professors and the eleven hundred students of the 
University, filled him with " awe-struck expectation." But 
these feelings soon wore off as he settled down to his pre- 
scribed studies. These, however, did not excite his enthu- 
siasm, with the exception of mathematics, which he prosecuted 



Thomas Carlyle. 3 



with ardor as "the noble^^t of all sciences." In philosophy 
he took little pleasure. The classics failed to attract him 
very strongly. Hence he says of the Univtrsity, " I learned 
very little there." Nevertheless his being there contributed 
immensely to the direction of his future life. In its library he 
found much nutriment for the development of his remarkable 
intellectual powers. Not sati>fied with its treasures lie ex- 
plored the shelves of the city circulating library. His crav- 
ing for books was insatiable, and his much reading, joined to 
the culture which characterized his associations, laid the 
foundations of his subsequent literary life, and probably of 
that dyspeptic habit which clung to him like the shirt of 
Nessus. His mental strength grew. He learned to rely upon 
it. A certain " ground-plan of human nature and life began 
to form itself" in him. His few personal student-friends 
perceived and confessed his superiority and prophesied his 
future greatness. Yet such was his shyness and the slow- 
ness of his thoughts in the class-room, that he left the Uni- 
versity without winning its honors, or impressing his tutors, 
except in the case of the mathematical professor, with the 
fact that he was a young man of extraordinary powers. 

To his praise be it said that during his University life his 
habits were pure and simple. Into that charmed circle of 
the vices which corrupt many young men during their stu- 
dent-life he never entered. 

In 1814 Carlyle, having finished his college course, looked 
out upon the great world to find means for s<.'lf-support. It 
was his father's fondest wish that he should become a minis- 
ter of the gospel, but Carlyle, though he began reading 
divinity, was in no haste to give his final consent, not 
having any desire to enter that vocation. Just then a mathe- 
matical tutor being needed in his old school at Annan, he ap- 
plied for the office and was elected. Its duties were not at all 
suited either to his taste or temper. He hated them, indeed, 
yet fulfilled them with scrupulous fidelity. He took no in- 



Thomas Carlyle. 



terest in the society of the town, shut himself np with his 
books, and foolishly nursed his dislike of teaching into posi- 
tive hatred. But he needed the salary ; and living at Annan 
enabled hira to be often with his family, and especially with 
his mother, whom he loved with filial passion. These ad- 
vantages sweetened somewhat the bitterness of the two years 
he spent in that town. 

From Annan he removed to Kirkcaldy, as the master of a 
seminary just established by parties who were dissatisfied 
with the principal of their own school, who was no less a per- 
sonage than the afterward eloquent but erring Edward Irving. 

Could Carlyle have left his fiercely impatient temper, his 
irritable nervous system, his hatred of. a teacher's especial 
duties, at Annan, he might have succeeded at Kirkcaldy. 
But this being impossilde, his life in the latter place was but 
little happier than in the former. His position as teacher did 
tiot secure him entrance into the very best society of the 
•place. Of those who did receive him he says, somewhat con- 
temptuously, "I have little intercourse with the natives 

Ihei'e We are always happy to meet and happy to 

part, but their society is not very valuable to me ; my books 
are friends that never fail me." It is no wonder, therefore, 
that after two years, this teacher, so shy and reserved at one 
time, so sarcastic and self-asserting at another, so proudly 
resentful of social neglect, and so full of dreamy imagina- 
tions, found his relations to his pupils and patrons so un- 
comfortable, as to lead him to resign his school, saying, 
*' Better die than be a school-master for one's living." 

The bright spot in Carlyle's Kirkcaldy life was his inter- 
course with Edward Irving. Though he went thither as the 
head of a school organized as a rival to Irving's, yet the lat- 
ter met him not only without opposition or jealousy, but with 
open arms and heart, invited him to his house, offered him 
the free use of his books, introduced him to his acquaintances, 
and did every thing that affection could dictate or genius 



Thomas Caklyle. 



suggest to make his situation agreeable. This was noble, 
chivalric conduct on Irving's part. Carlyle expressed his ap- 
preciation of it, saying, in his " Reminiscences," " Irving was a 
brother to me, and a friend then and elsewhere afterward — 
such friend as I never had again or before in this world, at 
heart constant till he died." 

In 1818 Carlyle took up liis abode in Edinburgli for the 
second time, but with very indefinite purposes as to his plan 
of life. Doubts respecting the creed of his father's church 
had caused him to abandon all further preparation for the 
ministry. Yet he knew not how to settle the stubborn 
problem of self-support. He had mannged to save nearly 
five hundred dollars out of his school salaries. He could 
subsist on this sum for a time, since he could live as before 
on oat-meal, potatoes and butter ; but he was ambitious of a 
great future. He longed to be eminent ; but by what steps 
to ascend the coveted height he could not determine. Seeing 
that distinction might be honestly won at the bar, he began 
the study of law. For a few months lie found pleasure in 
that subject, but before two years had passed law books and 
law lecturers appeared to him " mere denizens of the king- 
dom of dullness pointing toward nothing but money as wages 
for all that bogp()ol of disgust." Then, he adds, "I flung 
the thing away forever." 

Meantime his pecuniary needs had compelled him, in ad- 
dition to the work of private tutor, on which he had engaged 
with scant success, lo enlist his pen in the service of the 
book-sellers and magazine publishers. His friend Irving, Tvho 
foresaw, though somewhat dimly at first, that he Avas des- 
tined to win his laurels, if anywhere, in the field of literature, 
urged him to enter it vigorously. Following this advice, 
Carlyle furnished numerous articles for Brewster's " Edinburgh 
Encyclopedia," and for the periodicals of the day. His essays 
were well written. They procured him a little money, but 
brought him no fame. His hour had not yet come. 



Thomas Carlyle. 



Two bitter and fierce enemies, his life-long foes, seized upon 
him dunng this critical period of his career. One of these, 
dyspepsia, fastened itself upon his stomach; the other, doubt, 
now grown into positive unbelief, made its nesting place in 
his restless he art. The former originated in his excessive 
devotion to reading and in his poor diet, but was aggravated 
into almost diabolical intensity by his broodings on the dis- 
couragements of his lowly condition, by the morbid egoism 
which filled him with fret and fume, and by his fierce, long- 
continued struggles 10 solve the great problem of religion. 

Carlyle, in wrestling, as all thinking men must, with the 
mysteries of reve]atic)n an 1 of human destiny, suffered severe 
mental agony. "There came," lie says, "a trooping throng 
of phantasms dire from the abysmal depths of nethermost 
j)erdition. Doubt, fear, unbelief, mockery, and scorn were 
there, and I arose and wrestled with them in travail and 
agony of spirit." Why all this suffering? In his boyhood 
he had been tauglit the truth, sadly distorted, to be sure, 
into a rei^ulsive aspect by being stretched on the rack of 
Calvinism. It is creditable both to his head and heart that 
he revolted from its horrible Calvinistic side; but it was 
both his fault and his misfortune, instead of interpreting the 
Bible by that creed as he did, that he did not interpret that 
creed by the Bible. It was his faulty because he had seen 
the effect of faith in the Christ illustrated in the honest life 
of his stern but upright father, and in the pure, sweet char- 
acter of his gentle mother. He had also heard from the 
Christ that his kingdom must be entered, if at all, in the 
spirit of a little child, by turning the heart toward- the truth, 
and testing its divinity by its effects on the spiritual and 
ethical nature. But instead of approaching it as a child, he 
sat in judgment upon it as a critic, seeking to penetrate its 
mysterious depths by intellectual processes only. He failed, 
as all do, and must, who expect by " searching to find out 
God." Gazing at the eternal sun, he grew dazed, blind, and 



Thomas Carlyle. 



wretched. The end of the strife was, that he cut himself 
adrift from faith in revelation. He madly called this fatal 
departure from the truth " his spiritual new birth." It was, 
in fact, his deliberate acceptance of that gloomy gospel of 
despair and cynicism wliich embittered his own life and 
poisoned the productions of his powerful pen. Alas, that at 
this turning-point in liis mental history his engle eye should 
have failed to see the solution of all life's problems, not in 
" the everlasting no " of a hopeless skepticism, but in the 
"everlasting yea" of the love of the living Christ, the Son 
of the living God ! 

The tutorship of two young university freshmen named 
Buller, obtained through Irving's recommendation, for which 
he was paid a liberal salary, now brightened Carlyle's pe- 
cuniary prospects. The young men were richly gifted by 
nature, and eager to gain knowledge. Their companionship 
cheered his spirits and was "quite a bit of sunshine" in his 
otherwise dreary Edinburgh life. His literary abilities were 
also gaining recognition, and he found a ready market for his 
writings. His active mind found congenial food in the works 
of Schiller and Goethe, which he was reading with much 
zest, preparatory to writing a life of the former, and to 
translating the " Willielm Meister" of the latter, both of 
which tasks he proceeded to execute. Besides these engage- 
ments he kept up an affectionate correspondence with his 
family, and interchanged numerous letters with Miss Welsh, 
the lady whom he subsequently married. In this manner 
two years were passed when, during a visit to London, owing 
to some misunderstanding between himself and the mother 
of his pupils, he resigned his tutorship, and was, as he wrote 
to his mother, " once more upon the waters." 

Sitting thus in the sunshine of prosperity, admired by the 
few friends who discerned the greatness of his mind, idolized 
by his parents and brothers, esteemed, if not loved by his 
pupils, and by the graceful Miss Welsh, and with a brilliant 



Th- :,rAs Carlyle. 



future slowly dawning before Vim, Carlyle ought to have 
been a happy man. But instead o/ possessing happiness he 
sums up one of these years, saying, " Suffered the pangs of 
Topliet almost daily ; grown sicker and sicker, I alienated by 
my sickness certain of my friends, and wore out from my 
own mind a few remaining capabilities of enjoyment; re- 
duced my own world a little nearer the condition of a bare, 
rugged desert where peace and rest for me are none." Poor 
Carlyle ! His dyspeptic fiend was partly the cause of all this 
misery, which was doubtless much exaggerated ; but, as his 
friend Irving wrote him, its chief cause was his want of 
spiritual nourishment, the bread and water of the soul — 
blessings beyond his reach, since he refused to seek them 
through faith in the blessed Christ. 

Carlyle's "Life of Schiller " and his translation of Goethe's 
" Wilhelm Meister " were accepted by the literary world as 
evidences of his ability as a biographer and translator, but 
did not make him a literary lion. England had not then be- 
come familiar with German literature. The "Meister" was 
too immoral to suit the taste of the reading public. Jeffrey 
condemned it unsparingly. Carlyle himself confessed that it 
was immoral, that it contained " bushels of dust, and straw, 
and feathers, with here and there a, diamond of purest water." 
But he claimed toleration for translating it, on the ground 
that it contained " a striking portrait of Goethe's mind — the 
strangest, and in many respects the greatest, now extant." 
What a lame apology for introducing an immoral book to 
a nation of readers ! 

Irving, believing that Carlyle would be lionized in Lon- 
don, prevailed on him to visit that city when he was twenty- 
nine years oLl. He was mistaken. The literary world of 
the day had not as yet become aware of Carlyle's great 
powers, but looked upon him as a writer struggling after 
popularity, whose success was not yet assured. Campbell, 
Proctor, Coleridge, and other celebrities met him kindly, but 



Thomas Carlyle. 9 



not enthusiastically. Nevertheless, an approving letter from 
Goethe himself both cheered and flattered him. And when 
he left London he wrote that Irving was " by far the best 
among the fellows he had met with in that city." Others 
had been courteous; but Irving had flattered him! O, 
egoistic Carlyle ! 

When Carlyle was thirty-one years old he married Miss 
Jane Baillie Welsh. This lady, who was six years younger 
than himself, was the daughter of a highly respectable physi- 
cian of Haddington, who died when she was only eighteen. 
She was her father's pet, her mother's pride, and was called 
the "flower of Haddington." Her figure was light, airy, and 
graceful. Her features, if not positively beautiful, were 
very attractive, and were lighted by large, soft, black eyes, 
which were expressive of intellectual vivacity. She was 
well educated, had been delicately brought up, and had 
moved in the best society of her neighborhood. Edward 
Irving had loved her and she had reciprocated his afiection. 
Unfortunately, perhaps for both, he was already afiianced, 
when they met, to another maiden who would not permit him 
to break his troth. Irving, little dreaming that marriage 
was possible between parties so socially divided, so externally 
unlike, so unfitted by tastes, habits, and feeling to be joined 
in w^edlock, had introduced Carlyle to her as a correspondent, 
and as a genius destined to win high literary fame. That 
she never loved Carlyle, as a woman ought to love the man 
she weds, she frankly confessed to him before their marriage. 
It was not her heart that he won, only her intellect and 
hand. She admired his great intellectual power. She 
praised, flattered, idolized it, and finally grew ambitious to 
be the wife of a genius. Finding himself thus appreciated, 
Carlyle conceived the idea of making her his wife. She re- 
fused him at first very positively and frankly. He persisted, 
and she yielded, despite her better judgment and the op- 
position of her mother and family connections. The result 



10 Thomas Caelyle. 



she summed up in brief but pathetic phrase not long before 
death dissolved the tie, saying, " I married for ambition. 
Carlyie has exceeded all that my wildest hopes ever im- 
agined of him — and I am miserable I " 

Carlyie was not conscious tliat his treatment of his wife 
was hard, unkind, and unfitted to satisfy the demands of 
either her mind or heart. Her leading motive in marrying 
him was to live in intellectual companionship with him, par- 
ticipating in his studies and stimulating his aspirations. This 
he denied her, choosing to do his work alone, in gloomy silence, 
and in a repellent, morose temper. Hence, while he was pre- 
occupied with his pen, she was left to menial tasks too bur- 
densome for her delicate frame, uncongenial to her tastes, and 
unsuited to her character. Neverthelei^s, she bore up bravely 
during the first year or two of their married life, spent in a 
humble home at Edinburgh, because she had some congenial 
society to cheer her. But when he insisted on living, as they 
did some six years, on a dreary, desolate moorland farm, called 
Craigenputtoch, her trials were well-nigh unendurable. While 
there he w^rote numerous essays, besides that grotesque, in- 
describable, oracular, scarcely intelligible, highly wrought, 
yet stimulating, work, " Sartor Resartus." This book, though 
finally very popular with certain classes of readers, came near 
killing the magazine in which it first appeared as a serial, and 
went begging several years for a publisher before it appeared 
in book form. 

After six yeais of life at the moorland farm, the failing 
health and broken spirits of Mrs. Carlyie, Carlyle's inability 
to make the farm self-supporting, the hope of bettering his 
circumstances, and the advice of literary friends, led him to 
remove to London. Once settled in that great city, he re- 
newed his struggle with poverty in gallant style. Some of 
his literary friends advised him to give literary and historical 
lectures, which he did with success, despite his uncouth and 
unconventional manners. But though he spoke with great 



Thomas Carlyle. 11 



power and wonderful fullness of information, giving much 
satisfaction to large, cultivated audiences, yet, not feeling at 
home on the platform, after completing his engagements he 
deliberately resolved to lecture no more, albeit the pecuniary 
returns were eminently satisfactory. 

Carlyle was now near the end of his long struggle for rec- 
ognition and for bread. Tlie number of his admirers w^as 
increasing. His " History of the French Revolution," which 
appeared in 1837, became immediately and immensely pop- 
ular. The intensity of its grotesque style, its graphic word- 
pictures, its marvelous impressiveness, and its unique, poetic 
method of treating history, attracted public attention. Some 
applauded enthusiastically ; others criticised it severely ; 
many pronounced it unintelligible ; but most regarded it as 
containing evidence that its autlior was a man of uncommon 
ability. Hencefortli Carlyle was generally recognized, if not 
as a "bright, particular star," yet as an erratic comet of rare 
magnitude in the realm of intellect. 

Mr. Froude regards this work tlie most artistic and best 
production of his industrious pen. Other equally well-qualified 
judges give the palm to his "Letters and Speeches of Oliver 
Cromwell" The latter is doubtless less artistic, and contains 
fewer striking passages than the former; but its real value is 
incomparably greater. It is the best portraiture of Cromwell 
hitherto drawn, and to Carlyle's honor be it said that he was 
the first wn-iter who fully painted Cromwell as he really was. 
Royalist pens, through two centuries, had smirched his noble 
character with false charges of selfish ambition and religious 
hypocrisy. Carlyle removed those stains from his memory, 
and showed the world that he was a heroic soldier, a great 
statesman, a true patriot, and if not a perfect, yet a conscien- 
tious. Christian, acting up to the height of his convictions. 

Our limits forbid us to more than mention Carlyle's essays 
and political tracts; his "Life of John Sterling," an amiable 
soul w^hose faith in revelation had been sapped by his rational- 



12 Thomas Carlyle. 



istic teachings ; and his " Life of Frederick the Great," whose 
arbitrary and cruel character Carlyle vainly, not to say 
wickedly, seeks to deify. This last work cost him fourteen 
years of constant labor. It is a mine of facts relating to the 
times of that monster king, but is in Carlyle's most distorted, 
unintelligible style, and in his most cynical spirit. Its defense 
of Frederick reposes on the monstrous theory that might 
makes right. Like his " Life of Sterling," it deservedly weak- 
ened his influence in England, but made him popular in Ger- 
many, whose empress thanked him personally when, as the 
bearer of a flattering message from her husband, she saw him 
during her visit to England in 1872. And in 1873 he was 
presented with the Prussian " Order for Merit." 

This was his last important literary work. Following its 
completion was his election as Lord Rector of Edinburgh 
University. No honor could have been more grateful to hira 
than this. The proudest, perhaps the happiest, day of his 
life was the one on which he delivered his Inaugural Address 
in Edinburgh, to an audience of such high character as had 
rarely assembled in that city. He little imagined in that 
triumphant hour that a cloud was gathering over his home 
in London, which was destined to deepen into blackness the 
gloom which had saddened nearly all his life. Yet the plaud- 
its of his admiring friends had scarcely melted into silence 
before he was summoned back to London to commit to the 
dust the remains of the woman whom, forty years before, he 
had taken to wife. She died suddenly April 21, 1866. He 
lived fifteen years longer, honored by many because of his 
great mental ability, but really loved by few. Who could 
love a soul so grim, gloomy, sarcastic, unquiet, and despair- 
ing as his? In his boyhood and youth his mother said he was 
" hard to live with." His faithful wife had found little to 
cheer her sensitive spirit in his society beyond the unsatisfy- 
ing thought that, through her patient ministering, he had 
grown into the greatness she had foreseen when she became 



Thomas Carlyle. 13 



his bride. And after her death his gloomy mind was made 
gloomier than before by a newly awakened consciousness that 
he had not been to her what, with a better appreciation of 
the needs of her womanly nature, he might and ought to have 
been; what, indeed, she had rightfully expected iiim to be 
when, in the unwisdom of her young womanhood, she had 
married him for ambition's sake. Hence, after her death, his 
patient friends found that he was still " hard to live with." 
His death, February, 1881, was painless. It was the gradual 
extinguishment of a lamp that had consumed all its oil. 

Thomas Carlyle cannot be regarded as an ideal man. Far 
from it. That he was externally moral in his social life is 
unquestionable. No stain of outward vice spotted his life. 
That he possessed a very superior intellect is undeniable. 
Memory, imagination, insiglit into ethical truth, force of char- 
acter, and power to express his thoughts, were gifts with 
which he was marvelously endowed. But the range of his 
mental vision was narrow. His conceptions of spiritual truth 
were misty and nebulous. When he cast off his faith in rev- 
elation, and sought to find truth in nature and in men, his 
unphilosophic mind found itself in cloud-land, wherein it 
could find no solid standing place, no broad principles to 
guide it or afford it rest. He had a longing to be a prophet, 
but could not find the message lie was to utter. Hence came 
those writhings of mind which accompanied his composition 
of " Sartor Resartus," and the halt unintelligible, strange ver- 
biage which serves as a setting to the few diamonds which 
give value to its pages. He wrote vehemently of courage, 
truth, justice, sincerity, earnestness and good sense, but failed 
to set forth those spiritual moiives which are the only roots 
on which human duties to God and man will grow to per- 
fection. 

His religious life, if he can be said to have had any, was 
little more than an uncertain trust in the God of Nature. 
Assuredly his faith, whatever it was, gave no rest to his soul. 



14 Thomas Carlyle. 



It was, indeed, utterly ineffective in that it did not make him 
invKirdly moral. It left his natural selfishness free to grow 
like a weed in rank soil, until it made him the most conspic- 
uous egoist of his generation. It did not beget that sym- 
pathy with suffering humanity, that divine charity both for 
the individual and the race, whicli is the most beautiful orna- 
ment of the human soul. Whom did Carlyle love? For his 
parents, especially his mother, his brothers, and his sisters, he 
did cherish genuine affection. But we look in vain for evi- 
dence of his love to any other persons. Pei'hnps at one time 
lie loved Irving, the fi-ieml of his youth, but his "Remi- 
niscences " show the decline, if not the death, of that affection. 
That he had a kind of regard for the woman he married must 
be admitted ; but it cannot be claimed that he ever loved her 
with an affection sufficiently deep to make the sacrifices 
needed for her happiness. She idolized his genius, and he 
accepted her worship, but never reciprocated it with those 
tendernesses and delicate attentions which are essential to the 
happiness of a refined woman in her marital relations. How 
he regarded Jeffrey, Mrs. Buller, Chalmers, and indeed all his 
literary and other friends, is seen in his cynical comments 
on their characters in his " Reminiscences." As to men gen- 
erally, he regarded them with unconcealed contempt. He had 
no sympathy with reformatory movements, but sneered at 
their supporters with n cynicism worthy of Diogenes. His 
sympathies were not with the weak, but the strong; not with 
the slave, but his master; not v/ith the masses struggling for 
more bread and higher freedom, but with the few whose 
might enabled them to tread upon the many. 

That his startling sentences touching moral duties stimu- 
lated some of his readers to think and to act, is no doubt 
true. It is equally true that his unconcealed contempt for 
revealed religion promoted infidelity. With the exception 
of his "Cromwell" and a few of liis biographical and other 
essays, it may be questioned whether mankind will ever de- 



Thomas Caelyle. 15 



rive much moral beDefit from his writings. Assuredly the 
value of his life-work to society is altogether clisproportioned 
to his genius. And to what must we attribute his failure to 
be a mighty power for God, if not to his unfortunate renun- 
ciation of his early faith in revelation ? 

One of his biographers, W. H. Wylie, is of the opinion that 
during his last years Carlyle's mind tended back toward the 
faith of his boyhood. His opinion rests mainly on a conver- 
sation reported by an unknown American visitor, to whom 
Carlyle said : " A good sort of man is this Mr. Darwin, and 
well meaning, but with very little intellect. Ah, it's a sad, 
a terrible thing to see nigh a whole generation of men and 
women professing to be cultivated, looking around in a pur- 
blind fashion, and finding no God in this universe. I suppose 
it is a reaction from the reign of cant and hollow pretense, 
professing to believ^e what in fact they do not believe. And 
this is what we have got to. All things from frog-spawn ; 
the gospel of dirt is the order of the day. The older I grow 
— and I now stand on the brink of eternity — the more comes 
back to me the sentence in the Catechism which I learned 
when a child, and the fuller and deeper it becomes, * What is 
the chief end of man? To glorify God. and enjoy him for- 
ever.' No gospel of dirt, teaching that men have descended 
from frogs through monkeys, can ever set that aside." 

This, with one or two kindred observations, it is urged, 
show that this strange man inclined at last to re-accept that 
revealed truth which he had once so positively renounced. 
It is a slender foundation, indeed, on which to build such a 
plea. It is more likely that his belief remained to the last 
his peculiar type of Deism, which comprehended man's im- 
mortality and responsibility, but rejected his salvation by 
Christ, with the other doctrines of Holy Writ. It was a belief 
that never made him either a happy, loving, oi* lovable man, 
which may curse, but can never bless mankind. 



Miseries of Unbelief : Blessedness of Faith. 



Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil 
heart of unbelief, in departing from the living God. 

For unto us was the gospel preached, as well as unto them : 
but the word preached did not profit them, not being mixed 
with faith in them that heard it. 

And to whom sware he that they should not enter into his 
rest, but to them that believed not ? 

For what if some did not believe? shall their unbelief 
make the faith of God without effect ? God forbid ; yea, let 
God be true, but every man a liar. 

Unto the pure all things are pure ; but unto them that are 
defiled and unbelieving is nothing pure; but even their mind 
and conscience is defiled. 

Let no man deceive you with vain words : for because of 
these things cometh the wrath of God upon the children of 
disobedience, (unbelief) 

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten 
Son, that whosoever believetli in him should not perish, but 
have everlasting life. 

He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that 
believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not be- 
lieved in the name of the only begotten Son of God. 

Whom having not seen, ye love ; in whom, though now ye 
see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable 
and full of glory: receiving the end of your faith, even the 
salvation of your souls. 

Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth 
that Jesus is the Son of God ? 

Be thou an example of the believers, in word, in conversa- 
tion, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in pni-ity. 



[thought-outline to help the memory.] 

1. Birth '^ Father? Ancestors? His real reputation based on what? 

2. Early life ? Food ? Home teachers ? Temper ? Eeligion of parents ? 

3. Several steps of his education ? Mental characteristics ? Habits? 

4. After college — his first work ? Success as teacher ? 

5. The magnanimous friend at Kirkcaldy? 

6. Second residence in Edinburg? Occupation? Two "enemies?" Why 

his mental agony ? 

7. Tutorsliip ? German authors ? Correspondence I - Reception of his Biog- 

raphy of S— and translation of W- M ? 

8. In London— Irving's mistake? London friends? 

9. Marriage? History of his wife? On the farm? Again in London — work? 

Literary standing ? List of his works ? 
10. Lord Rector ? Sudden bereavement ? His death ? Moral, intellectual, and 
religious life? Religious influence of his writings? Carlyle, Darwin, 
and the Catechism ? 



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